Radicals

[Hedonologist]

Is it easier to learn characters and remember them with a higher degree of recall if you learn the 214 radicals of by heart first? I am planning to do this (if nothing else I will have gained 214 characters so why not) am am wondering how useful it will be overall.

[Aishe]

I've only recently started Mandarin, so take my words with a grain of salt, but I think learning them as they appear would be more useful than learning them on their own. I would take perhaps the first five or ten most commonly used, make sure I know their meanings, and then see if I am able to recognise them when being used in characters.

[linguaholic]

This is another way you could actually go about it, yes. However, learning the radicals at an early stage would also help you with your writing, because if you know all the radicals, you can basically already write all of the different components of chinese characters.

[Aishe]

This is another way you could actually go about it, yes. However, learning the radicals at an early stage would also help you with your writing, because if you know all the radicals, you can basically already write all of the different components of chinese characters.

Ahh true! I've never thought of it this way and I can see now how useful it would be. I'd still probably learn them in small batches though, wouldn't want to overwhelm yourself with over two hundred characters right off the bat!